1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to patient support surfaces. In, particular, it relates to a patient support surface which has integral air cell arrays which allow medical personnel to rapidly turn a patient for providing various types of patient care and treatment.
2. Background
Caring for patients in the hospital or other medical environment often requires that the patient be rotated or turned so that treatments and medications can be applied to various parts of the patient's body. Every patient requires some sort of nursing protocol (changing wound dressings, bathing, applications of medications, examinations, getting the patient out of bed, etc.) which requires the movement and/or turning of the body. Unfortunately, most hospital facilities use either conventional mattresses, or support services, to support a patient's body while they are hospitalized. During the course of treatment, a nurse may be required to make several time-consuming trips per day to ensure that the patient is properly cared for and treated. Often, a nurse who may be much smaller than the patient is required to rotate the patient to apply treatment. It is difficult to move or turn patients who are lying on a conventional mattress or support surface. This can be uncomfortable for the patient, and create problems for the nurse who may have difficulty moving a larger (e.g., bariatric) patient.
A support surface by design is a mattress made up of air (and/or foam) which is soft and which moves or changes shape with patient movement. Moving a patient on a support surface such as this is especially difficult if the patient is large. There is also a possibility of injury to both the patient and the nurse if a nurse tries to manually turn a patient. Frequently, there is a tendency is to pull on the patient's arms to move the torso, or push on the patient's back. This causes strain on portions of the patient's body as well as on the nurse's back. It would be desirable if a patient could be easily turned without requiring excessive physical activity on the part of nurses or other medical practitioners, and without unnecessary discomfort to the patient. Further, it would be desirable to provide the nurse the ability to control the rapid turning of a patient for nursing protocols.
In addition to the physical difficulties associated with rotating patients, the medical practitioner's time is also a concern. For example, a medical practitioner such as a nurse has numerous patients to care for and cannot devote excessive amounts of time to a particular patient. In addition, the medical facility also has an interest in maximizing time efficiency for the purpose of keeping costs low.
Therefore, there would be an important benefit to medical care industry if a method could be devised to allow a nurse or other medical practitioner to quickly turn a patient for the purpose of providing medical care and/or treatment. Further, nurses cannot wait very long while the patient is being turned, as they need to start procedures as quickly as possible due to nursing workloads.
There are support surfaces on the market which continuously turn the patient for therapy (lateral rotation). These support surfaces are designed for patients with pulmonary complications and also to alternate pressure on the patient's body for the purpose of avoiding bedsores and other undesirable side effects of prolonged bed rest. They do not have a nurse controllable quick turn feature to allow a patient to be turned as needed for the application of medical treatment protocols.